One of the problems faced by emergency medical providers, such as Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), is that a person in distress may not be able to communicate during an emergency. For example, a person may be experiencing a diabetic crisis, where the person is unable to answer questions asked by the EMTs.
Moreover, given the ease with which people are able to move throughout society and the world, it can be difficult to determine when an outbreak of a particular medical syndrome, such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is underway. For example, a person may have contracted SARS before boarding an airplane to travel to another city, region or country. A SARS outbreak may, therefore, cross regional or international boundaries quite easily given the ease of travel. This mobility can make discovery of the syndrome difficult and, moreover, may place emergency medical providers in a somewhat reactive position so that the nature of the crisis is only understood after it is well underway.
In addition, legal restrictions on the handling of private medical information, such as the Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act Of 1996 (HIPPA), require medical providers, such as doctors, EMTs, etc., to handle a person's private medical information as set out under the law. These legal restrictions may hinder the dissemination of critical medical information during a crisis which may place emergency medical providers at a further disadvantage during an outbreak.
Embodiments according to the invention can provide methods, systems, and computer program products for aggregating medical information. Pursuant to these embodiments, a method of aggregating medical information can include receiving, at a remote aggregation system, individual syndromes collected by mobile personal medical devices associated with respective bodies as the mobile personal medical devices move within an environment, aggregating the individual syndromes at the remote aggregation system, and determining whether an environmental syndrome exists for at least some of the individual syndromes.
In some embodiments according to the invention, a system for aggregating medical information includes a processor circuit that is configured to receive individual syndromes collected by mobile personal medical devices associated with respective bodies as the mobile personal medical devices move within an environment and that is configured to aggregate the individual syndromes at the remote aggregation system and that is configured to determine whether an environmental syndrome exists for at least some of the individual syndromes.
Other systems, methods, and/or computer program products according to embodiments of the invention will be or become apparent to one with skill in the art upon review of the following drawings and detailed description. It is intended that all such additional systems, methods, and/or computer program products be included within this description, be within the scope of the present invention, and be protected by the accompanying claims.